The Old Stone House Restaurant in Warwick will serve its last meals this Sunday, closing after five years inside a home built more than 250 years ago. Owners Arek Kwapinski and Sylwia Kubasiak announced the closure without giving a specific reason, saying only that the restaurant at 21 Hathorn Rd. will shut down after service on Sunday, September 13, 2026.
According to DailyVoice.com, the couple acquired the property in 2016, when the house was deteriorated and endangered, and spent the following five years restoring and updating it before opening the restaurant there in 2021. The publication reports that no details have been released yet about what comes next, though the owners say they are planning a new space, menu, and atmosphere while keeping the same focus on food and hospitality.
The approximately 15-acre site, including the main house and a separate two-bedroom guest cottage, was listed on the open market in October 2015 for $499,500 as a historic property needing substantial renovation, as reported by Upstater. Town of Warwick Planning Board minutes mention plans by Kwapinski and Kubasiak to restore the eighteenth-century structure. The Friends of Hathorn House was established to advocate for preserving the structure.
A House Built by a Revolutionary War Colonel
The original stone house dates to 1773, built by John Hathorn and his wife Elizabeth Welling Hathorn, per DailyVoice.com's reporting. Hathorn served as a colonel in the 4th Orange County Militia during the Revolutionary War, later sitting in New York's first legislature and representing the state in the First and Fourth United States Congresses, the outlet notes.
The home's south end bears the inscription “H, I & E, 1773,” using the 18th-century Latinized letter “I” to stand for “John” alongside Hathorn and Elizabeth, according to The Warwick Advertiser. The property was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001, DailyVoice.com reports, cementing its status as a protected Orange County landmark.
From Dairy Farm to Family Farm to Restaurant
The site's history stretches well beyond the Revolutionary War. War of 1812 veteran Ezra Sanford Jr. bought the farm in 1834, and his son Pierson Ezra Sanford later expanded the stone house and built up a prominent dairy operation, combining it with the adjacent Jeremiah Morehouse lot in 1871, according to Wikipedia. The Raynor family then acquired the property in 1926 and continued farming there. The property was placed on the National Register in 2001, and the deteriorating estate was listed in 2015.
Concern over the building's fate had already been building by 2014, when the nonprofit Friends of Hathorn House was established to advocate for preserving the physical structure and to educate the public about Hathorn's militia service, according to Friends of Hathorn House. The later restoration was undertaken after Kwapinski and Kubasiak took ownership.
A Community Gathering Spot, Not Just a Dining Room
Since opening in 2021, the restaurant has served contemporary American cuisine inside what DailyVoice.com describes as a more than 250-year-old Orange County landmark, blending the building's historic character with a modern setting. Beyond regular dinner service, the venue doubled as a local civic hub, hosting the Warwick Valley Chamber of Commerce's annual holiday networking party in December 2024 and the Friends of Hathorn Founders' Day event in May 2022, according to the Warwick Valley Chamber of Commerce.
The closure lands within Orange County's broader tourism economy. Tourism Economics reports from 2023 and later Orange County tourism figures provide broader context for the closure.
What Warwick's Zoning Rules Could Mean for a Reboot
Whatever the owners build next inside the historic house will remain unannounced. Town of Warwick records describe a framework meant to keep adaptive reuse projects true to a landmark's historic character.
For now, the specifics of that next chapter remain unannounced. DailyVoice.com reports that no details have been given about the new concept or when it might open, leaving Warwick diners with one more weekend to eat inside the walls John and Elizabeth Hathorn built in 1773 before the space heads toward its next reinvention.
